Departures of note

Henri Vever, a leading Art Nouveau jeweler, built a legendary collection of Japanese ukiyo-e prints—only to sell most of it sight-unseen to a Japanese industrialist during World War I. In 1924, he parted with roughly 7,996 prints, keeping his finest pieces for himself. The bulk of the sold collection eventually reached the Tokyo National Museum, where it formed the core of its ukiyo-e holdings.

Vever ran Maison Vever, the family jewelry business founded by his grandfather. His designs, shown at the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris, were praised for their innovative use of enamel and gemstones, drawing on Japanese art and European mythology. Unlike many Art Nouveau jewelers who favored cheaper materials, Vever worked with rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, often in collaboration with illustrator Eugène Grasset.

By the 1880s, Vever had become one of the earliest Europeans to collect ukiyo-e prints seriously, buying from dealers such as Hayashi Tadamasa. He was a member of Les Amis de l'Art Japonais, a group that included Claude Monet. His collection was so respected that pioneering scholars like von Seidlitz, Migeon, and Lemoisne used it for their research; Lemoisne's L'Estampe Japonaise relied on Vever's prints exclusively.

After the war, Vever continued collecting, acquiring pieces from former rivals as their collections were auctioned in Paris. He stopped in the 1930s, and his remaining collection vanished during the German occupation of France. It reappeared in 1974, when Sotheby's announced a four-part auction in London, the last sale taking place in 1997. In 1924, Vever had also donated about 350 jewelry pieces to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, preserving France's jewelry heritage from the Revolution to 1900.